


Coping Mechanisms

by Lynds



Category: Merlin (TV)
Genre: Angst, Arthur Pendragon Returns, BAMF Gwen (Merlin), Depression, Fluff, Forgiveness, Gen, Happy Ending, Mental Health Issues, Poor Merlin, Post-Canon, Protective Arthur, could read as slash or platonic, or even poly idc, so do a few of the others, they all love Merlin and each other very much, you'd get over your issues too if you were stuck with each other for 15 centuries!
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-09
Updated: 2018-01-31
Packaged: 2019-03-02 20:41:28
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,057
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13326099
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lynds/pseuds/Lynds
Summary: Sometimes Merlin needs a little help getting him through the day, and it comes in the form of all the people he failed so long ago





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> What can I say? I was having a bit of a down day. I wrote a short piece about all the people who live in my head and act as coping mechanisms for me, and then realised they all sort of align with Merlin characters, so it turned into me torturing poor Merlin AGAIN. I like to think he's nearing the end of his long, long wait, and while he thinks they're all in his head, they're really reaching through the veil and holding him up, asking him to wait just that little longer and they'll be there with him soon

There are up to five of us living here at any one time.

There’s Gwen. She’s so…practical. Functional. She’d say boring, but I don’t care. I love Gwen, I need her. She’s the one who comes to find me staring, loose armed, at the pile of washing up too worn out even for tears, and without a word she’ll push me to one side and do it for me.

“Sorry,” I whisper.

“For what?” She actually sounds surprised.

I sigh. “For…this. For being useless.”

She cups my face, makes me look at her. “Never be sorry, Merlin. Not for this. If I can’t do this for you, really, why am I even here?” She gives me a sunny smile, pats my cheek and finishes the chores. She even puts lunch in front of me. Asparagus, baby corn and a fried egg. Bless her, Gwen’s meals are haphazard, but good. 

She doesn’t usually stick around, off doing stuff. Always doing, all the mundane stuff no-one else wants to do. Stuff that would make Mordred throw things around the room.

Mordred is like that. Angry. He looks angry, like he never grew up past the goth teenager stereotype, even though I know for a fact he was never a goth. Sure, he was angry as a kid, but he didn’t show it much. It was only later, with a bit of freedom that it all came out. He loves me fiercely, but he scares me, too. And his anger…I can get lost in it. When it flares up I feel like its light is so bright my little candle flame ceases to exist. I love him too, but I don’t want to be him.

I want to be like Morgana. She’s power, pure and deep, a well of it with perfect control. She never raises her voice, but with her flawless skin and her hair loose and curling around her shoulders, she draws the attention anyway. She’s not around much, these days, but when she is, when she helps me, it’s like a geyser going off under my skin. 

And then there's Arthur. He's different, of course, in every way. I want to be like him, too, but he’s everything, happy and cheerful, and when he’s around it’s like being with God. I feel like my skin doesn’t exist, like I’m continuous with the world, like every breath I take is euphoria. If he was a chemical, he’d be addictive. But he and Morgana, I don’t like them to see me down. That’s what I tell myself. That’s why they don’t come when I’m low.

And then there’s me. I’m the youngest, or so it feels anyway. Or maybe it's the other way round. Desperate to please, so desperate. And then I remember that I’ve failed in every way, pleased nobody, achieved nothing, and I shrivel up, and Gwen has to come get me, dig me out of the compost heap I bury myself in. I’m the weakest, the stupidest, the most pointless, the saddest. And yet all these people, they’re all here because of me. They all exist because I do. And some days, that’s all I’ve got to keep me clinging to existence. Because I failed them when they were alive, and I’m the only one who can keep them here, even if they’re just in my head. 

Then there are those times, those blessed times. I’ve got my hands in the dishwater and I’ve got a CD playing. I start singing along and moving my hips, and Gwen’s standing to one side with her sweet, sweet smile. And Arthur is behind me, his hands wrapped around me, white shirt getting wet sleeves as he helps. And we’re singing sad songs with all our hearts and a smile on our face and I think maybe…maybe I’ll be OK.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I couldn't leave poor Merlin all alone again! And neither could Arthur and the others...

There are four of us living here at all times.

Trouble is, Merlin holds us back sometimes. The times he needs us most. When he’s lying on the floor, fingers barely twitching under the weight of his lethargy, when the pain gets so great he can’t function beyond breathing, he puts up walls. I hammer on them with my fists. Mordred’s got nothing on my fury. Morgana stands beside me with her chin trembling and tears threatening and she can’t get through either. 

Gwen’s the only one who can, calmly insinuating herself between the cracks in his walls, the cracks that are there because he wants help, he desperately wants us to help him, but he doesn’t think he deserves it. She bends down beside him and talks about the weather. After a while she’ll say “do you think we can do a load of washing?” and he’ll stand in a daze. She’ll be with him the whole time, her words focusing on every movement of his arms, every step. Merlin thinks it’s her actually doing it for him, but she can’t lift things. None of us can. We’re incorporeal.

But we’re real. Sometimes he calls us his imaginary friends. Says the ‘real Arthur’ would tell him to buck up and stop being such a girl. Says it with a smile on his face and I get so angry when he does that! Angry with myself, but I’ve had a thousand five hundred years to learn so instead I just smile and wrap my arms around him. He leans into my chest with a sigh and it hurts, it hurts so bad that he thinks this comfort couldn’t possibly come from outside.

He’s sitting on the lake shore now, and he looks so young, so small. He’s been out there for so long, all by himself, and he doesn’t know how hard we’ve been fighting to get back to him. How Gwen found Mordred and Morgana and pulled them to Avalon out of the afterlife by their earlobes. How they found me and woke me up. How we’ve been negotiating with the Sidhe for centuries.

Morgana always did know how to twist people and language without a single lie. The Fae didn’t know what they were getting into when they started with her. Mordred’s power seems to have transcended life and death and only grown stronger - it was he who pulled the three of them through the walls to my prison. And Gwen… well, being Queen for decades seems to have unlocked some powerful new level to her stubbornness and poise. The Sidhe argue with her, and she stands there like granite and lets the words wash over her, and stands firm. 

And all I can do is watch Merlin. Ache for him when he hurts, when he feels the darkness crowding in on him. Cry and beg for forgiveness when he screams his fury across battlefield after battlefield, because surely Albion’s time of need has come and gone. The wars get worse and worse, and each time I’m held back from him, he wonders what can humans think up next? What will be terrible enough that I will finally be sent back?

It’s Gwen who finally makes the Sidhe agree. Gwen who points out Merlin’s health, the fact that he moves less and less each day, that he hasn’t done magic in fifty years. His hope is dying, only flaring up in tiny candle flames and small smiles, and with it dies the magic of the world. And when that happens the Sidhe will be trapped here only to wither, forgotten. She tells them so coldly that it’s just a matter of fact, and they tremble, and agree. Albion’s greatest hour of need is now.

So we link our hands and hold our gaze on Merlin, slumped by the lake. His hair is even more of a wyvern’s nest, his stubble almost a scruffy beard, because he’s been sitting here for days, not eating, barely moving, while we’ve been shaking the Sidhe into seeing sense. His glassy eyes stare into nothing and my heart pounds as I watch him, worrying that it’s too late. I barely notice Mordred nodding to Freya, Gwen exchanging one last word with the Sidhe lord. 

We step forward, though nothing, and thick mist, and a veil of glass shards that press against us, trying to hold us back, until the air cracks and we’re free. And we’re standing ankle deep in the cold water of the lake.

Merlin is right in front of us but he doesn’t even blink. Morgana squeezes my hand and lets go, crouching down in front of him and putting her hand on his knee. He looks up dully and summons up a tiny smile, just the barest twitching of his lip. Morgana gives him her pretty grin and leans forward to nudge her nose against his.

At the touch he blinks and frowns slightly. “What are you doing here, silly?” Morgana asks him. “Let’s get you up and Gwen can make you some food.”

“Already bossing me around, I see,” Gwen smiles and steps forwards to take Merlin’s arm, lifting him to his feet. He wobbles, and Mordred supports him on his other side.

“You guys get more real every time,” Merlin mumbles with a little smile, his head listing to one side like he hasn’t even got the energy to hold himself up. And that’s it for me.

I step forwards and scoop him up, lifting him into my arms. Over my shoulder would be more practical, and my arms ache already, light as he is, but I want him close, all of him.

He gasps, his eyes going wide, and I can see the tiniest flicker of something ignite in them. “You’re…”

“We’re here, Merlin,” I say, holding him close.

“You’re…”

He touches my face, touches my chest, touches my hair. Presses his nose into my neck and cries as I follow the others up to Merlin’s cottage.

I don’t know if the Sidhe expected everything to be fixed the moment we walked back into the world. I don’t really care. We’ve handed over our mortality as a downpayment - apparently the Fae can do a lot with a human death, particularly if willingly given, so they’ve really no room to complain. Merlin’s not just going to bounce back into his cheerful seventeen year old self just like that, and we don’t need him to. We need him to get better on his own terms.

And he will. He’s still got more bad days than good right now but we’ve had over a thousand years to learn the best way to deal with them. Now when I find him on the floor, when he doesn’t feel worthy of a bed, there are no walls to stop me going to him. I can lift him into bed with me and curl my body around him as he cries. He’s going to have to get used to the fact that I don’t think less of him for it. 

Gwen just gets on and makes him a bowl of soup when he can’t bring himself to move. He still says sorry. “We’re fifteen centuries old, Merlin,” she chides. “And we’ll live as long as you now. If I can’t make a bowl of soup or a good omelette for you to make up for all those weird lunches you blamed on me before, well, what am I good for?”

“I don’t know what’s wrong with me,” he whispers. “I’ve got everything I ever could have wished for and more, and I’m still failing you.“

“Stop that,” Mordred frowns. “We didn’t come here with a schedule. That’s not how this works. Now,” he says. “I’m going to walk into town in an hour. Anyone who wants to join me is welcome.”

Merlin’s smile twitches and he curls around in my embrace to face me, burrowing into my shoulder. I can feel the slight hum of his magic increase ever so slightly. It might go back down to a baseline later. It might go up. It might swirl and dance around us while he sings along to the Lumineers or hugs Mordred or plays chess with Morgana or kisses Gwen on the cheek. But if it doesn’t I don’t care, because we’re here now. We’re all together, and we’ve got the next thousand five hundred years to potter along like this, showing each other we’re loved and forgiven.


End file.
